Modern Irish Autobiography

Modern Irish Autobiography

Also by Liam Harte CONTEMPORARY IRISH FICTION: Themes, Tropes, Theories (co-edited with Michael Parker) IRELAND: Space, Text, Time (co-edited with Yvonne Whelan and Patrick Crotty) IRELAND BEYOND BOUNDARIES: Mapping Irish Studies in the Twenty-First Century (co-edited with Yvonne Whelan)

Modern Irish Autobiography Self, Nation and Society Edited by Liam Harte

Selection and editorial matter Liam Harte 2007 Individual chapters contributors 2007 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-4039-1268-8 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-51131-0 ISBN 978-0-230-20606-9 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230206069 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Modern Irish autobiography:self, nation, and society/edited by Liam Harte. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Autobiography. 2. Biography as a literary form. 3. Ireland Biography History and criticism. 4. Self in literature. I. Harte, Liam. CT25.M565 2007 941.7082092 dc22 2006052971 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07

Contents Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors vii viii Introduction: Autobiography and the Irish Cultural Moment 1 Liam Harte 1 With a Heroic Life and a Governing Mind : Nineteenth-Century Irish Nationalist Autobiography 14 Sean Ryder 2 Creating the Self, Recreating the Nation: The Politics of Irish Literary Autobiography from Moore to Behan 32 Bernice Schrank 3 Life Purified and Reprojected : Autobiography and the Modern Irish Novel 51 Eve Patten 4 Pilgrimage to the Self: Autobiographies of Twentieth-Century Irish Women 70 Taura S. Napier 5 Loss, Return, and Restitution : Autobiography and Irish Diasporic Subjectivity 91 Liam Harte 6 Breaking the Silence: Emigration, Gender and the Making of Irish Cultural Memory 111 Breda Gray 7 Twentieth-Century Gaelic Autobiography: From lieux de mémoire to Narratives of Self-invention 132 Máirín Nic Eoin 8 Drawing the Line and Making the Tot : Aspects of Irish Protestant Life Writing 156 Barry Sloan v

vi Contents 9 Fighting Without Guns?: Political Autobiography in Contemporary Northern Ireland 176 Stephen Hopkins 10 Voice Itself : The Loss and Recovery of Boyhood in Irish Memoir 197 Denis Sampson 11 Memoirs of an Autobiographer 214 George O Brien Bibliography 239 Index 252

Acknowledgements I would like to thank all of the contributors to this book for their patience, cooperation and commitment during its long gestation. Thanks are also due to Paula Kennedy and Christabel Scaife at Palgrave Macmillan for their editorial support and to the two anonymous Palgrave readers for their helpful critical interventions. I would like to acknowledge the financial support of both the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages at the University of Ulster and the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at the University of Manchester. I am gladly indebted to Brian Maguire for granting permission to reproduce his painting, Children and Self (Remembering), on the cover. Finally, I would like to pay special thanks to Yvonne Whelan for her encouragement, inspiration and practical help throughout the writing and editing process. vii

Notes on Contributors Breda Gray is Senior Lecturer in Women s Studies at the University of Limerick. She is the author of Women and the Irish Diaspora (2004) and has published widely on aspects of Irish gender, migration, citizenship and belonging. Liam Harte is Lecturer in Irish and Modern Literature at the University of Manchester. He is the editor, with Michael Parker, of Contemporary Irish Fiction: Themes, Tropes, Theories (2000), and of Ireland Beyond Boundaries: Mapping Irish Studies in the Twenty-First Century (2007), with Yvonne Whelan. Stephen Hopkins is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Leicester, where his current research focuses on Northern Irish politics and the French Communist party. His publications include Passing Rhythms: Liverpool FC and the Transformation of Football (2001), edited with John Williams and Cathy Long. Taura S. Napier is Associate Professor of English at Wingate University, North Carolina, where she specialises in women s autobiography and Irish and postcolonial literatures. She is the author of Seeking a Country: Literary Autobiographies of Twentieth-Century Irishwomen (2001). Máirín Nic Eoin is Lecturer in Irish at St Patrick s College, Dublin. She has published extensively on modern and contemporary literature in Irish, and her B ait Leo Bean: Gnéithe den Idé-Eolaíocht Inscne i dtraidisiún na Gaeilge (1998) won the Irish Times Prize for Literature in the Irish Language. Her most recent book is Trén bhfearann Breac: An Díláithriú Cultúir agus Nualitríocht na Gaeilge (2005). George O Brien is Professor of English at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. Among his numerous publications are three volumes of memoirs, The Village of Longing (1987), Dancehall Days (1988) and Out of Our Minds (1994), and two books on the playwright Brian Friel. Eve Patten is a Lecturer in English at Trinity College Dublin. She has cowritten Irish Studies: The Essential Glossary (2003) with John Goodby, Alex Davis and Andrew Hadfield, and is the author of Samuel Ferguson and the Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ireland (2004). viii

Notes on Contributors ix Sean Ryder is Senior Lecturer in English at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He has published widely on various aspects of Irish nationalism and culture and is the editor of James Clarence Mangan: Selected Writings (2004). He co-edited Gender and Colonialism (1995) with Tadhg Foley, Lionel Pilkington and Elizabeth Tilley, and Ideology and Ireland in the Nineteenth Century (1998) with Tadhg Foley. Denis Sampson has taught at Vanier College, Montreal, Université de Caen and Université de Montréal. He is the author of Outstaring Nature s Eye: The Fiction of John McGahern (1993), Brian Moore: The Chameleon Novelist (1998), and many articles on twentieth-century Irish fiction and autobiography. Bernice Schrank is Professor of English at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She is the author of Sean O Casey: A Research and Production Sourcebook (1996) and editor, with William Demastes, of Irish Playwrights, 1880 1995: A Research and Production Sourcebook (1997). Barry Sloan is Lecturer in English at the University of Southampton. His principal research interests are in post-1800 Irish writing, with a particular focus on the interactions between literature, history and religion. He is the author of The Pioneers of Anglo-Irish Fiction 1800 1850 (1986) and Writing and Protestantism in the North of Ireland: Heirs to Adamnation? (2000).